The present invention relates to a vessel for cooking food and the like.
It is known that pots and pottery presently used for cooking food, heating liquids and the like may be of different kinds. The shape of said vessels is usually defined by a basin on which a lid can be fitted. Said basin is always provided with handles for lifting it.
It use said vessels are disposed with their bottom directly in contact with the flame of a burner or the like. The flame grazes said bottom but usually it rises in a vertical direction too, as well as tangentially to the side walls extending from said bottom. Such vessels which meet very simple construction requirements, have however many specific drawbacks.
In fact, much of the heat produced by the flame is not used but merely dispersed upwardly, in the vicinity of the side walls of the vessel. As a result there is a high energy consumption and a long cooking period is required.
It is also important to note that with a vessel of the above type the flame does not uniformly heat the different parts of the vessel itself. In fact the bottom is brought to a high temperature while the side wall, above all close to the upper edge, has a much lower temperature. It results in a non uniform cooking of the food and in the practical impossibility of establishing the most appropriate cooking temperature in a precise manner.
Furthermore, the flame grazing the side walls of said vessels very often causes the handles designed for lifting them to be burnt. The phenomenon is so diffused and important that many pots are provided with handles merely consisting of bent metal bars without the presence of any insulating material adapted to avoid burning. Also, from a practical point of view such pots are not adapted to be brought directly to the table, except some pots made of very expensive materials. In fact the bottom of said pots, which was in contact with the flame, has a very high temperature and therefore the pots themselves can only rest on suitably arranged supporting elements. Furthermore, the walls too as well as the handles of said vessels have very high temperatures, which causes the latter to be transported and/or handled with some difficulties.
A further important remark relative to the present technique in the field of vessels for cooking food and the like directly relates to the cooking step. Presently it can be executed only in two ways: by keeping the inside of the vessel at room temperature or by cooking under pressure by means of suitable apparatus called "pressure-cookers". Practically it is not possible to cook under weak overpressure, exploiting the weight of the vessel lid which tends to keep the vessel closed. In fact on increasing the pressure inside the pot or the like, the cover tends to move up and in some cases in turns over. In order to avoid these risks usually vessels are only partially covered.